High School Notebook: Lopez balancing studying, coaching

Mike Lopez, the son of Lincoln-Sudbury football coach Tom Lopez, is helping his father coach the Warriors while also getting his Ph.D at Brown University.

Dan Cagen/Daily News staff

Mike Lopez has no plans to be a head football coach, no dreams to succeed his father in the role Tom Lopez has held for 35 years at Lincoln-Sudbury.

Mike Lopez has his own career goals, one he’s pursuing at Brown University in the form of a Ph.D in biostatistics. If all goes according to plan, Lopez will eventually be a college math professor, doing research and teaching.

Once in a while, though, the son looks exactly like his father.

"We talk about football the same way, and I’m not as good as he is at what he does, but we have the same mannerisms," said Mike, who’s been a volunteer assistant coach for the Warriors since 2004. "We’ll both be adjusting our hats, walking in the same direction (on the sidelines)."

During the football season, Mike Lopez’s role is generally limited to video work and being on the sidelines on game day. He does more in the preseason, attending nearly every practice.

He’d like to be there more, but there’s that little matter of the Ivy League school an hour south of Sudbury.

"I guess I do behind-the-scenes stuff," he says. "I can’t make it to practice every day, so when I’m home I’m looking at the TV and instead of watching TV, I’m going through the games. I like that I can make it during the preseason. I can’t make it during the week but … if there was a career for full-time high school coaching, I’d be really interested. But I’m doing something I love."

A former L-S offensive lineman, Lopez graduated in 2000 and followed his father's path and went to Bates College, where he continued his football career. He became a math teacher at Framingham High and met his wife, Erin, also an FHS math teacher. The two got married in 2010 and have a 16-month-old daughter, Lyla.

Lopez left Framingham in 2008 and got a master’s in statistics at UMass. Now he’s in the third year of a four-year program at Brown.

All the while helping his father whenever he can.

"Since he’s graduated, he’s never been able to go full-time (coaching)," Tom Lopez said. "I appreciate what he does. We send him film and he breaks it down during the week. You know, he knows what we do. He graduated for me (12) years ago, so he knows the offense, he knows the defense."

Mike Lopez even gets to call a play once in a while. Like, for instance, in the playoff win over Barnstable last year, when he called "quads right, 4 to Harris" — and watched it become the winning touchdown.

"We had run that same formation the previous play," recalled Mike Lopez, who also occasionally corresponds on L-S football games for the Daily News. "We had a really good receiver last year, a kid named Jack Harris, and they were single-covering him. Once we saw that, it kind of made for a good opportunity."

Tom Lopez’s career as the head man at L-S stretches back to 1978, and he was going for his 250th win Saturday night. He’s been to seven Super Bowls and won three.

Of course, those don’t rank anywhere near the top of the reasons Mike Lopez takes a timeout from the math books to help his father’s football team.

"I look up to him so much," Mike Lopez said of his father, "so to see his enthusiasm for coaching football and coaching kids how to be a student-athlete and to encourage them to be themselves (is inspiring). The thing that he does more than any coach I’ve ever seen, when kids go to college and play college football, he’ll go not only to the football games, but for the guys who play baseball or lacrosse, he’ll go to those guys’ games.

"He’s really devoted. It’s fun to be around the program."

Big changes afoot?

A visit to nitty-gritty land: the MIAA released its realignment proposals for the 2013-14 through 2016-17 school years last week, which could create significant change in postseasons, particularly in basketball and boy’s hockey.

In boys and girls basketball, 22 teams are slated to move from Eastern Mass. brackets (North and South sectionals) to CMass, including 13 in the Daily News area. Under the proposal, every Tri-Valley League team — with the exception of Norton and Westwood — would move to the Central sectional. Other schools affected by the change include Framingham, Franklin, Lincoln-Sudbury, Marian, Natick, Tri-County and Wayland.

The move allows CMass, as well as Western Mass., to add Division 4 for basketball and have a true Div. 4 state champion. Previously Div. 4 had been only for Eastern Mass.

In boys hockey, the biggest change will come in the South bracket. Currently in Div. 2 South, there are 19 teams — less than half of the 41 teams that call Div. 3 South home, 30 of which made the playoffs last season.

To even out the numbers, three teams — including Franklin — will jump from Div. 2 South to Div. 1, while 15 teams will be added to Div. 2. Those teams include Bellingham and Medway going from Div. 3 and Milford/Blackstone-Millville from Div. 3A.

"There's been a lot of talk about getting some equity," Franklin coach Chris Spillane said. "The Division 2 South had only like 10 teams in the playoffs, Division 3 had like 30. And really, with the size of Franklin, we probably belong in Division 1."

Spillane has known the Panthers could move up for a couple years and has scheduled more Div. 1 teams to get his team acclimated to the change.

All proposals are subject to appeal by the schools, which will be heard this winter. Spillane said Franklin has no plans to appeal. The final realignment plan will be announced around the end of the winter sports season in March. …

Coach Dan Welty and several members of the two-time defending CMass champion Algonquin field hockey team are on a special field trip this weekend.

Welty and his players are in New York for a clinic with Australian field hockey star Jamie Dwyer, whom Welty says is field hockey’s version of Michael Jordan. Welty said he met Dwyer — a five-time world field hockey player of the year and three-time Olympic medalist — in May at a pre-Olympic event.

Dwyer is at Columbia University to hold the two-day clinic. The 20-player clinic on Sunday will be held from 2-4 p.m. on Sunday, and Algonquin will be represented by seniors Emily Hart and Kate Sears, and juniors Molly Dore and Maggie Wraight.

Dan Cagen can be reached at 508-626-3848 or dcagen@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanCagen.

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